reporter erin cunningham managed to get close to the scene. she joins us now by phone. erin? >> reporter: what it looks like is the taliban fighters launched an atault on the hotels in which at least one blew himself up at the front gate in order to allow the other gunmen to enter. after that they took positions on the roof of the hotel where they were engaged in an hour-long gun battle with the afghan police. later on the afghan national army arrived at the scene, stormed the hotel and evacuated many of the guests. it's unclear right now how many guests were actually staying at the hotel at the time. however, there were rpgs being launched, artillery fire, and it finally concluded with nato attack helicopters coming to engage the insurgents on the roof. >> erin, this clearly has hallmarks of other attacks that we have seen, even in cube kabul itself and in pakistan, small groups of suicide bombers invading facilities and basically shooting who they can blowing people up and trying to create as much mayhem as possible. it echoes back to the mumbai attacks in india. what did i